Woven of Dust and Starlight
by Cherith
Summary: This is the story of Teza Surana, a girl that's lived in Kinloch Tower nearly all her life and all she ever wanted was to be free. Trying to help her friend propels her into a kind of freedom, one she's not sure she wants.
1. Chapter 1

When the nights were their darkest and the moon and stars were hidden from view, she tried to remember the first time she had seen the stars from the tower windows. No matter how long she tried, the memory would never come. In the years that came after, there were times too numerous to count and she had long since stopped trying.

At five, Teza had climbed atop another girl's bed to so she could reach one of the small windows and stare out into the night. The air had been cool and the breeze on her face felt like freedom. But when she stared out too long the empty night started to look like a black abyss that she could fall into at any moment and she had quickly scrambled back inside for fear of toppling in.

Something about all her life in the Kinloch tower still felt like that, even more than a decade later. As though at any moment she might fall out of that window and tumble down into the silent darkness, crashing beneath the still waters that lay below.

One of the Enchanters told her that she had shown up on the docks just across Lake Calenhad as a toddler, old enough to walk and talk, but little more. They didn t know for sure how old she was and nothing had been left with her that would tell them. Only three things were certain to them: that her name was Teza - as it was of the only things she could say clearly, that her pointed ears clearly hinted at her parentage, and that the tiny sparks that emanated from her fingers when she clapped excitedly said exactly why she had been left for them.

She had been far too young to remember any of that. They celebrated the day of her arrival as the day of her birth, not that there was much celebrating involved for anything in the tower. And it was really only important to her in that it marked the passing of the days and the weeks and the years she spent waiting for a different life to begin.

Kids as young as Teza were rare in the tower, so when she was six and a young girl with dark skin and a mop of curly hair showed up that was just her age, they became quick friends. Jeanne knew her family, could pass letters to them if the templars let her, and she remembered bits of her life at home. Some nights they would lay in one of their bunks, toes pressed to toes with heads at opposite ends, and Jeanne would recount her memories. Teza thought when Jeanne recited them all, one after the other, that her voice sounded like a chant or a prayer the templars repeated in the chapel; things said out of love and reverence. It was as though Jeanne thought if she said them often enough, faithfully enough, one day she would get to go home again.

When they were eight, she and Jeanne helped each other up to the ledge just inside one of the large windows high up in the tower. They opened it, but sat just inside and watched the rain as the wind turned it sideways and drove it past the tower in thick sheets. She fell in love with the the rain then, with Jeanne's dark hand held in hers, and both of them laughing when the wind changed and drove the rain inside soaking their robes completely.

Teza found she loved nearly everything about the rain, the way it sounded against the tower s walls, as though it might break each stone down into pieces so small there was nothing left to keep anyone within. The way the sky turned dark and grey and menacing was a reminder that there was a world somewhere beyond the tower walls where other people lived, and like her, they too could be drenched from head to toe if they stood outside too long. The rain could beat against her skin, the sensation not unlike the tingle of magic that sizzled underneath each time she readied a spell; it evened her out, trouble inside and out.

It wasn t that they meant to make trouble, she and Jeanne, but invariably they found themselves in it: exploring parts of the tower forbidden to the children, searching the kitchen for snacks after mealtimes, in the library reading spells that were far more advanced what any pair of eight year old girls should be capable of. So yes, the rain knew her, and she it. The bright flashes of lightning through the sky were nothing different than the sparks that still came from her hands when she was too excited to remember control. And the booms of thunder were the hammer beats of her heart on the days she feared would be the day the templars took her and branded a sunburst on her forehead.

Then the rain would come again to wash away her fears. It would be quiet at first, small drops beading on tan skin when she stuck her arms out open windows. She would press her face near the glass and inhale the breeze that brought her smells from other parts of Ferelden. If she closed her eyes and remembered her lessons and the brightly colored maps tacked to the walls of First Enchanter Irving s office, she thought she could place each scent. Rich pine from the forests sent by peoples that looked like her, but that she d never seen and likely never would. The tang of metal and coins exchanged in cities in every direction, places full of people that were free to come and go in the sunshine as they pleased. Earth and stone from the stout dwarves near the Frostbacks. She had never seen a mountain before, but like the rain, she knew the snow too, and supposed she might like it there very much.

It wasn t a girlish dream that she clung to, imaging the day she might escape the tower. For the teachers and templars had already instructed her she couldn t trust her dreams. But she hoped. Hoped that one day, the templars might trust her enough to let her out into the garden to pick a flower or that she could wander free through the hallways and the gardens, or swim in the lake somewhere far, far below her feet. Hope was her version of Jeanne s litany of memories from home. Hope was her fuel, her fire, like the sparks under her skin and the rain that leaked in from badly sealed windows. Hope that she was more than just Teza, the elven girl locked in the stone tower. 


	2. Chapter 2

By the time Teza was thirteen, she realized there were many lessons to be learned in the tower, but very few of them had anything to do with the things the Enchanters thought they were teaching. Some were merely a matter of numbers: that she could count on one hand the apprentices that had lived in the tower for as many years as she had, that there were far fewer elven mages than human ones, and the number of apprentices that knew their families outside the tower were disappointingly few. It wasn t just that the circle disapproved of continuing communication between parents and their children of the tower, but that so many of them had been given over to the templars or chantries, or simply, like she, been left for someone to discover.

Other lessons were more abstract but the knowledge of them burrowed so far down inside her, that Teza knew she could never forget them: how difficult it was to control her emotions and by extension, her magic; that no matter who she was, what she knew, or how long she lived in the tower, humans would always treat her like a knife-eared slave; and that there were far worse things a templar could do than take one s mind away.

Teza was exhausted by the tower, of its stone walls and still, blue lake and the world beyond its shores that didn t even know she existed. It wasn t that she fancied herself anything special, or that could think of a reason why anyone might want to know she was there. The silence from the world beyond the lake was deafening and expansive and like the dark abyss of night she saw from the windows. If she let herself focus on it, she would fall into it and could not climb back out.

Jeanne told her that she had to stop thinking about what lay for them beyond the tower. She would hold Teza s hand like when they had been young, and held her gaze as though Jeanne could pass her strength between them. It was of another of the many lessons Teza had learned: how to nod and smile, even at her best friend, and say that everything was alright when it wasn t. For all the things the tower had taught her, she had no words to explain how much the darkness in her own mind frightened her.

Teza went to her lessons and followed the templars orders. She tried to stop thinking about anything on the other side of the stone walls, kept away from the other students for fear of saying something to attract the templar s attentions and hoped that eventually everyone, Jeanne included, would stop noticing her altogether. Teza became convinced that it would be better for everyone, most especially Jeanne, if people forgot about her.

Despite her better efforts, many of the human apprentices continued to take notice of her. When they were kind, it was the days they tweaked her ears or pulled her hair. It earned them nothing but the camaraderie of the other kids, uncertain glances and grateful sighs from the other elven apprentices that it was her and not them, and the occasional raised eyebrow of an overly attentive instructor. Jeanne s efforts to distract them, only garnered her similar attention and eventually drove a wedge between them that, in addition to Teza s obsessions with the weather and escape, was too difficult to recover from.

Just after her thirteenth nameday, a new apprentice: mousy, dark-haired boy named Jowan, asked Teza caught her between classes, and asked why she never fought the other students when they were cruel. His voice was soft and timid, and he held his hands clasped nervously at his waist as they walked through the hallway. If it was a joke, Teza couldn t find a sign of it on his face, and she looked at him in surprise.

When she looked away, he continued, You re an apprentice too. One of the Second Enchanters would surely put a stop to them if you said something.

Teza had no response to give him other than pursed lips and a half-hearted shrug. A lifetime in the tower had not convinced the other apprentices that she was like them, and she was certain that nothing would. If that meant getting her ears pulled or her braids tacked to the backs of chairs, she would learn to live with that, just as she had learned to survive without sunlight, stuck between a circle of unbroken stone. When Jowan didn t ask again, but didn t leave her side, she walked with her head bowed to avoid the remaining questions in his eyes.

After one of the worst storms of the summer, one of the older boys snuck out of the tower. He was brought back to the tower in chains by hulking templars she didn't recognize. The boy s face was covered in dirt, streaked with tears and he wore the remnants of a tattered robe over a stained tunic and trousers. His head hung down as he was paraded through the halls to the First Enchanter s office. It was Jowan and not Jeanne that found her after, sliding a hand into hers and squeezing until she stopped shaking. When she tried to find out more, where he had gone, or what he had seen, it was Jowan that told her the boy had been given a job in one of the storerooms near the kitchen, and a sunburst blazed on his forehead.

Any hope of leaving Kinloch Hold that Teza had left became a dwindling resource. 


End file.
